


don’t give me what i want (just give me what i’m needin)

by Memelock



Series: sylvix week 2020 - now 100 percent more on time! [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, but anyways, i don't even KNOW how to explain this, others mentioned but those are the speakers, there's like kinda not super explicit but definitely there sexual content, this is a weird one i'm gonna put it out there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26654290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memelock/pseuds/Memelock
Summary: Although the entirety of the war could be considered one long labor, there are twelve tasks, twelve requests or demands or orders, that Sylvain remembers more clearly than the rest.//this is for day five of sylvix week 2020: myths and legends AU.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: sylvix week 2020 - now 100 percent more on time! [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933810
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	don’t give me what i want (just give me what i’m needin)

**Author's Note:**

> okay SO. i don’t know if it will actually come across but this was SUCH a fun project to take on. it started as me bouncing ideas off my partner for a 12 labors of hercules themed piece, and they came up with a completely ludicrous series of events that vaguely mapped onto the labors, and then i adapted it into… this. so here, for day 5 of the 2020 sylvix week event — myths and legends au — is my extraordinarily-loosely-based-on the 12 labors of hercules piece. it’s not even really an AU but the title is from “unfollow the rules” by rufus wainwright so let’s say that’s what i’m doing.

**I. THE NEMEAN LION**

“Stop being so delicate about it.”

If asked, Sylvain would have said he’d thought he wasn’t being especially gentle. They hadn’t even made it to the bed, Felix laid out with his back to the floor, splayed on Sylvain’s rug, things Sylvain had futilely dreamed of for five lonely years to this point. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite Sylvain’s usually semi-dissociated sex, unplugged and relatively careless of how much his partner was enjoying themselves — he knew the right things down in his brainstem, the kind of muscle memory that didn’t require refinement or concentration. But this was Felix. It was different.

But, he would have said, not that different. He certainly wasn’t precious about it. Felix felt good under him, too good to take his time too sweetly, but there he was anyway, glaring and flushed, sin and delight and all good things just out of Sylvain’s reach. He grinned up at him from his spot between Felix’s legs, trying a new angle with his fingers, and his mouth hung open but the glare didn’t go away.

“Tell me what you want, if you’re going to be a brat about it,” Sylvain murmured, lips at the crease of Felix’s hip, his hard cock brushing his cheek. Sylvain felt like he hadn’t know what good meant before now.

“I want something to remember this by,” Felix snapped, only a little undermined by the breathiness in his voice, only sounding a little like _this is a one-time deal_. “You’ve done this a million times, show me.”

Something shut inside Sylvain, familiar and dark like curtains over a window, and whatever reflected that in his face had Felix’s eyes widening, just a bit. He slid out of him, catching his slick hand on the inside of Felix’s thigh on his way to his waist, flipping him onto his stomach, hiking him up onto his knees. Felix was strong, he didn’t have to just let him do this. He wanted it.

“Yeah?” Sylvain asked, finally, lining himself up, pumping himself a few times with the oily palm. “You want it like that, huh?”

“Shut _uuuuuuup_.” The last word lengthened flatteringly on the vowel as Sylvain buried himself inside Felix, watching the arch in his back as he bottomed out. From there it was just skin and sounds, just the growing ache in his glutes as he pounded into him, just the flattening of the carpet as Felix gradually slid forward against it, pushing the hem of his shirt back down where Sylvain had so carefully, so slowly, lifted it.

He pulled out when he felt close, one more manhandling to flip Felix back over, to plant his knees under his thighs and push up just for the joy of seeing his face flush, seeing him bite his lip. His hand was big enough to hold both of them together, to jerk them off between Felix’s skinned knees until there were two different messes on his stomach. Satisfied, Sylvain sat back on his heels, panting a little, watching Felix do the same. After a moment, Felix sat up too, knees pulled up, grimacing at them.

“That’s going to be irritating,” he said, glaring at Sylvain like it was his fault. He supposed it was, at least a little. He just grinned, pinning it in place when Felix didn’t say anything else before brusquely scrubbing his stomach on Sylvain’s shirt, without asking of course, dressing, and, with a click of the door behind him, leaving.

**II. THE LERNAEAN HYDRA**

“Don’t waste my time.”

It wasn’t an insignificant demand; Felix seemed to think that the hours in his day were more precious than gold, more significant somehow than anyone else’s. Sure they were all in the middle of a war, throwing themselves into risk after risk after flung axe after blast of fire, but Felix was the special one, Felix was the one to be demanding.

Well. Sylvain could certainly try spending his own time elsewhere. If he’d learned anything when he was younger it was that sinking feeling, blinking and suddenly you’re pulling out, finishing wherever the goddess might not see it. Maybe it was a distraction, maybe it was earnest desire to somehow earn Felix’s approval, to make the time they spent together worth it. Sylvain supposed it was one thing to handle each others’ wounds after a battle when the actual healers’ talents were needed elsewhere, but it was another altogether to want anything more.

So, more was exactly what he avoided thinking about, forgotten names and blurred faces and satisfied partners and a well-maintained reputation among the denizens of Garreg Mach — and even a few more far-flung locales that had more persistent trouble with thieves. He never slept alone when they spent the night in Magdred Way.

It was after his fourth in a row dark-haired, brown-eyed spitfire that he realized it might not be working so well. Potential bedfellows were more than easy to find, springing up even from the burnt and ruined ground of the battlefield — more plentifully, even. When one left another took their place. Sylvain couldn’t afford standards beyond the basics, attractive, clean, willing not to be impregnated, so he had options, thank the goddess for his inescapable charm.

All that to say it was incomprehensible that he left the very handsome son of a farmer from outside the monastery in the morning with nothing but Felix on his mind, nothing but skinned knees and a lifted chin and verbal brutality to fill his head.

Ashe saw him first, down by the blacksmith waiting to pick up his broken bow, crouching to pet a little grey cat that looked a little like him. He waved and Ashe stood up, eyeing him with that kind of half-judgmental pity that hit Sylvain right where it hurt the most, where it felt the worst.

“Need company on the trek back?” he asked, when he passed the gate, when he was close enough to count the freckles on Ashe’s nose.

“You should figure your shit out while you still can,” Ashe said, voice hard, eyes soft. Sylvain waited with him for the bow anyway.

**III. THE ARCADIAN DEER**

“Prove yourself.”

So it hadn’t exactly been Sylvain’s most successful relationship conversation, which was saying something by this point. After all the work he’d fruitlessly done, the tail he’d chased, to get Felix out of his head had been unsuccessful he figured the best way to resolve the situation was to garner himself another shot. Sure, maybe Felix would never be hanging on his arm among the others, writing letters full of floral prose and salacious reminiscing when they had to be apart. But he might fuck Sylvain again, with an appropriate demonstration of skill in battle. And that was as good as a foot in the door. Impressing the person you want to sleep with through military prowess was practically a Faerghus rite of passage.

And this was how Sylvain found himself getting shot at from what felt like halfway across Gronder Field by Claude, who had a bow a hell of a lot stronger than the one Sylvain remembered from the Battle of the Eagle and Lion. It wasn’t his fault, per se. Ingrid needed to get back to her pegasus, to handle some of the Imperial mages, and if there was anything he was good at it was running interference. Thus, Claude was shooting at him, but it meant he wasn’t firing on Ingrid or her pegasus, reunited and moving quickly to the east.

“Sylvain, give it up,” Claude called. “There’s no reason we should kill each other. This is your guy’s problem with Edelgard. We can walk away.”

The trees were thick, thick enough that the next arrow to whiz by him only clipped his ear. He had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out, giving himself away, but he managed it. Based on the direction the bolt had come from Claude was somewhere to his left. Sylvain moved that way, slowly. It felt a lot more difficult to chase his death wish when no one was directly benefiting from it.

“Your hair is red as fuck,” Claude said, definitely closer, close enough to land an arrow right in the crook of Sylvain’s elbow, the soft-lined and unarmored joint.

“Fuck,” Sylvain swore. Nothing for it. He moved for the sound of Claude’s voice, the flash of yellow he thought he’d seen, near enough thank the goddess that he had a hope of catching him. Sylvain wanted his horse, more and more each time his feet came down hard on a rock or a branch. He caught up to Claude easily enough, electing to toss his lance to the ground within reach for the moment and take the Alliance leader bodily down after it. Sylvain had the size advantage, the strength advantage, and the closeness advantage. He couldn’t lose.

But it also felt like he couldn’t win, endless moments later, looking at Claude pinned and bloodied under him. Sylvain’s arm throbbed, and he was starting to get woozy at the thought of the tip of his ear lying somewhere in the forest, and Claude was grinning up at him, one eye already starting to swell shut.

“Draw?” he asked, holding one hand out. His glove was torn, two of his fingers scratched up from their roll on the ground. Sylvain looked down at his palm doubtfully, then back up at Claude’s face.

Then a scream, eminently recognizable, familiar down in his bones, rent the air, and the Alliance leader lived another day.

**IV. THE ERYMANTHIAN BOAR**

“Don’t wind up like him.”

It was strange, after Gronder, the way the group dynamics shifted and simultaneously did not shift. Sylvain was one of the only former students openly not ready to forgive Dimitri, but because he was who he was he was also one of the only ones willing to spend time with him, certainly the only one willing to pretend he wasn’t angry or afraid.

And this was how he found himself sitting in the cathedral, hiding behind a pile of rubble that they were meant to be cleaning out, with the future king of Faerghus. Not how he’d predicted this specific Wednesday afternoon going but not out of the realm of possibility. He did, though, wish that Rodrigue’s death hadn’t spurred half of their army, including Dimitri, into talking about their fathers in general. It was funny, or rather it wasn’t, that others seemed to still be thinking about Rodrigue and his ghost when Felix was still alive and still hurting. Just one more reason to be the one talking with Dimitri now. Less likely to seek Felix out.

“Yeah?” Sylvain asked, leaning back until his head thunked against the smooth edge of a discarded stone. Just enough to hurt. “You don’t think the Margrave is a role model?”

“I am serious,” Dimitri insisted, as if there was ever a time he wasn’t. Imagining Dimitri making a joke was strangely wistful, acerbic in his stomach. He might have when they were children. “You have come a long way since our time in the academy. I… should we win this war, I do not want to be surrounded by people like our fathers.”

“I am far more handsome,” Sylvain forced out, a last ditch attempt to cut the cord of the conversation.

“Your father can never be satisfied.” Dimitri’s words pulled the air from Sylvain’s throat, so he stayed silent. “He is always hungry for more. Miklan was not enough, not even when he was chewed up and spit out. The Lance, the war, the border, he thrives on them because they are never-ending. Sylvain,” Dimitri continued, turning a surprisingly soft blue eye on him, pinning him to the spot, “I mean it. You are only his son, not his mirror image. I would like to see you happy, fulfilled. Content.”

Sylvain looked at Dimitri for a moment, really looked at him, the way only a few of the others would even now. It was odd, really. In his earnestness he looked young again but simultaneously like the king he was doomed — destined — to be. “You mean that, don’t you?” Sylvain asked, and Dimitri nodded, not even the glint of insincerity on his face. It was almost handsome, returned to the realm of humanity. “They picked the right guy for the job.”

**V. THE AUGEAN STABLES**

“Listen to me.”

It was easier said than done. The noise of the stable wasn’t conducive to a conversation in low voices, which is exactly what Felix was, for some reason, trying to have under whinnies and the grind of hoofs on wood and the murmurs of Marianne a few stalls down, talking, as she was wont to do, to her horse.

“Yeah, Fe, I’m trying to. Any chance you’d consider having this talk somewhere quieter?” Sylvain tried not to let any irritation into his voice. Things were still in the repairing stage between him and Felix, so he was willing to cut him as much slack as he wanted.

“No,” Felix replied, for no discernible reason but to aggravate Sylvain. Which, hey, maybe he deserved it, after Gronder Field, after all the putting-up-with Felix had been subject to in the time since. Not that Sylvain had been the perpetrator, but he was the punching bag. “I’d like to do this now.”

Somewhere, the door to the stables opened and shut again, Marianne clearly fleeing in self-preservation against whatever was about to happen. Sylvain steeled himself, put away the brush he’d been using on the dappled stallion in the stall before him, and turned to face Felix.

Goddess it was difficult to look at him, handsome and hardened and yet still somehow open to Sylvain, on some level connected deeper than either of them could dig up no matter how hard they tried, counter-productively. “I’m sorry,” Felix said. Sylvain just stared. It was hard to do anything else. Felix took a step toward him, and Sylvain felt like he had on a ship to the Sreng territory once upon a time before he’d been familiar with the process, unsteady, like the ground was rolling up to meet him. He breathed, shallowly. “What we did… it wasn’t a waste of time. It was good.”

“Yeah?” Sylvain said, leaning against the door of the stall, hoping he was coming across as smooth, casual, instead of how he felt, which was breathless like he’d been punched in the lungs.

“Yes,” Felix said, almost a repeat, stepping closer, pressing Sylvain’s back against the barrier between them and the poor stallion. The wood was grounding at his spine, not that it mattered in the face of Felix, close to him at every point, insistent, like a contest. “I’d like to do it again.”

It was a heroic effort, really, not to just go where Felix wanted him then. Instead, Sylvain panted, “Here?” and Felix nodded, firmly, and his hand moved expertly, familiar where it touched him at his waist, and Sylvain had a feeling as he bent to Felix’s will the way he always did that this might be the last time Byleth assigned them to stable duty.

**VI. THE STYMPHALIAN BIRDS**

“Lend me a hand here.”

This was not a pair Sylvain wanted to get in the middle of, yet as Felix looked up at him, hopeful if his semi-deluded mind was to be believed, he couldn’t help but gaze back, then snap his eyes to Dorothea across the table and sit next to Felix in a hesitantly tacit display of solidarity. Dorothea was glaring at him by the time his ass hit the bench.

“What troubles my two favorite people?” Sylvain asked, hoping that wherever Ingrid was she couldn’t hear him. “I hate to see either of you sad.”

“Hmmph.” If only this was all Dorothea had to say. “I can already see you’ll just take the side of your little boyfriend, so I wonder whether it’s worth it to make my point.”

Hmm. Okay. Whatever they were arguing about must have been at least a little serious. Sylvain adjusted himself in his seat, to give himself a little time to think. Not that it ever, ever did him any good. “If you’re calling Felix ‘little’ it must be a real controversy,” he offered, half reproachful, and Dorothea looked actually cowed for a moment before recovering her usual panache.

“Low blow, maybe,” she admitted, flipping her hair over her shoulder like it had personally offended her, “although you know it’s only a figure of speech.” She paused then. Felix was silent, waiting for Dorothea to hang herself on her own length of rope. It was a little touching, really, how confident Sylvain could tell he was that he would take his side. Which, hey, he just might depending on the topic. “We were just discussing the point of all this training and fighting.”

Uh oh. This was a losing battle for Dorothea. Sylvain might have been the least serious of the group, but he was still from Faerghus. They took war altogether differently than the people from Adrestia in their ranks. “I’m guessing neither of you were arguing that it’s great for impressing girls,” Sylvain said, only a little shakily. Dorothea at least humored him with an eyeroll.

“So,” Felix cut in, “what do you think, Sylvain?” His voice wasn’t smug, not exactly, but now that all three of them knew the topic of conversation it was much more clear that he could predict where Sylvain’s allegiance lay.

“I’ll get my point out there before I’m crushed by the weight of you northerners’ collective guilt,” Dorothea said, quickly. Goddess, if there was anyone Sylvain respected more on the earth he couldn’t think of them at this moment in time. “I’d say the end result of training is to survive, to defend yourself against what’s out there.” Like she’d forgotten they were listening for a moment, she murmured, “There’s always something out there.”

It wasn’t as though she was wrong, Sylvain thought, shifting in his seat. Felix’s knee bumped his under the table, like a reminder of his own goal, every time he picked up the lance that seemed to get heavier and heavier the more time went on, the more lives it took. He grinned instead, a little sadly, and Dorothea rolled her eyes again. “I knew it,” she groaned. “You’re about to say some chivalric bullshit about protecting the people you care about.”

“Hey,” Sylvain said, with the strength of Felix’s leg still pressed against his, “you think I could take as many hits as I do without all this training?”

**VII. THE CRETAN BULL**

“Don’t be late.”

It wasn’t, Sylvain thought, strictly speaking necessary for Felix’s words to chase themselves endlessly around in his brain while Seteth stood, unmoving and not looking much like someone about to wrap up a sermon, lecturing him. And yes, Sylvain was a grown adult, but that didn’t really seem to bother Seteth, or give him pause, or ruffle him, and to be honest Sylvain was shifting back and forth, rocking his weight from foot to foot anxiously, and he expected it made him look a bit childish after all.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Sylvain cut across a sentence he was almost sure was about taking his training seriously, and Seteth frowned. “Now if you don’t mind, I—”

“Sylvain,” Seteth said, serious even for him which was frankly sobering, “my goal in this is not simply to beleaguer you with the wittering of an old man. I have spoken to a few of your friends, and it has led me to believe that I might benefit from speaking to you as well, getting to know you better. I do not wish to see more young people throw away their lives in this terrible war.”

“Me?” Sylvain asked, trying not to sound like he was gulping down a heaping lump of fear. “Nah, I’ve got lots of work ahead of me, you know? Someone has to take on Gautier territory and undo everything our parents did, right?”

Seteth frowned. Sylvain didn’t blame him. “You sound much like your friend, Ingrid,” he said. Sylvain had seen the two of them talking a few times, but hadn’t really thought much of it. Ingrid loved authority figures almost as much as she loved any chance to act like one. “I can see that the both of you feel very strongly responsible for what those around you have done.”

“Well, yeah,” Sylvain said, before he could really think about it. Seteth had that effect on him, he supposed, which was maybe why they had never been close before now and likely never would be. “I mean, it’s not like the Margrave is gonna fix what Felix and Dimitri’s fathers did in Sreng. That’s basically his entire livelihood.”

“I would like you to remember that they have also done things to you,” Seteth said, as though Sylvain hadn’t spoken at all. “Consider that there is much that is possible for you, more than you can imagine right now.”

“Uh,” Sylvain said, and for reasons he could pretty easily guess at but wasn’t ready to fully articulate, even in his own mind, it was at this moment he remembered Felix again. “Yeah, I think I get it. Anyway, I’m late for something important, Seteth, thanks for the chat.”

Seteth shook his green head, circlet glinting in the last rays of the sunset around them, before Sylvain was past him and out of eyeline. He may not have been able to see him, but he thought he could picture his face as he murmured, still audible, “Youth is wasted on the young.”

Sylvain was unquestionably late. By the time he made it to Felix’s door to knock penitently, there was no answer and likely at least one dummy in the training grounds significantly worse for wear.

**VIII. THE MARES OF DIOMEDES**

“Um. You should just go talk to him.”

Maybe it was the fact that the usually taciturn Marianne brought it up, but Sylvain felt flabbergasted. The two of them were in the stables, the main place they had in common, Ingrid and Ferdinand there evidently just to eavesdrop and to provide a significantly more aggressive note to the conversation, Dorte in his stall shuffling a little, as if he could understand what they were saying.

“Is this the level of counsel you have been forced to provide for all these years?” Ferdinand asked Ingrid. It was despicable that Ferdinand dared to be redheaded and so much more personally compatible with Ingrid, touching that Ingrid continued to love Sylvain more, but the familiar way she rolled her eyes back at him did rankle Sylvain nevertheless.

Marianne was waiting for him to speak. Right. “I mean, I could, yeah,” Sylvain said, running the curry comb through Dorte’s mane again. He didn’t need it, really, Marianne took excellent care of the horse who had stubbornly survived five years in a relative ruin and another few months of war after the fact for, quite probably, Marianne’s sake alone. But Sylvain did it anyway. He liked taking care of the things that made her smile; they were few enough and far between. “But, like, it is still Felix we’re talking about. You all remember what he’s like, right?”  
“Sylvain,” Ingrid sighed, years of experience having the same basic conversation over and over again weighing the sound down, “just apologize. Stop bothering us with this nonsense.”

“I’m not bothering you,” he argued, biting down on the _right?_ sitting on the end of his tongue. Marianne and Ferdinand were wilder cards but Ingrid would certainly tell him if he was annoying her. She didn’t hold back, thank the goddess. “I’m asking my only intelligent friends for advice.”

“Somewhere, Dorothea is punching the wall nearest her,” Ingrid said.

“My only _other_ intelligent friends.”

“Felix cares about you, Sylvain.” Marianne again. She was learning a little too much about their tightly-controlled group dynamics the more time she spent around them, around Dimitri. Now that he was back with them it was like a switch had flipped, opening the floodgates of his personality, all the things he’d kept under lock and key for all those years. “I really think if you just say you’re sorry and ask him what’s going on between you he’ll tell you.”

“I agree,” Ferdinand offered. Sylvain half expected this to be his only contribution of worth, debatable as that worth was. “Even to me, it seems obvious that if your only error was to be late for a meeting, there is something else happening. Your solution lies at the root of that _something else_.”

“The great philosopher, Ferdinand von Aegir,” Sylvain announced, sweeping the arm not stroking Dorte around dramatically. Ingrid stifled a chuckle behind an ill-disguised cough. Score one for the original redhead. It did, however, strike Sylvain that he probably wasn’t wrong. “Fine. I’ll get to the bottom of this before any of you get sick of listening to the thrilling ins and outs of my life.”

**IX. THE BELT OF HIPPOLYTA**

“Be truthful.”

Sylvain tilted his head to one side, considering the question from another angle as if that would help him at all. Felix had called him to his room, not for anything exciting as Sylvain had originally hoped — at least, nothing of that particular brand of exciting that they were easing back into yet again after an emotional troweling of their situation. Truthfully it was exciting just to be back in Felix’s presence, relaxed and having a casual conversation.

“Okay,” Sylvain said, “I really don’t think adding another one will help you. Like, you only have two hands, right?”

Felix frowned, crossing his arms a little defensively so they passed perpendicular over the third sword belt he was considering strapping around himself. “Well,” he countered, “what if one gets knocked away from me? Shouldn’t I have another option?”

“But you fight with one at a time,” Sylvain said, with the patience of someone who knew he was in the right. “So, you take one into battle with you, you stab it into someone too deep to pull it back out, you unsheathe the next one, you’re more careful with it, you’re good to go. I just think a third is too much weight, and it’ll get in the way of your shield. Wear a knife or something instead.”

“Hmm,” Felix said, as good as conceding that Sylvain had a point. Which, for the record, he did.

“Yeah, a knife,” Sylvain repeated, firmly. He stood from Felix’s desk chair, boldly, setting his fingers at the clasp of the sword belt that hung in the balance along the line of his ribs. “Think how much more difficult it will be to get in and out of your gear if you add an entire other buckle. It may not seem like a lot now but after a battle it’s just more hassle.” He slid the ends of the strap under Felix’s arms, letting it drop to the ground.

“How selfish of you,” Felix murmured. There were embers stirring in his eyes, in the depths of his pupils.

Sylvain wanted nothing more than self-immolation. “How do you mean?” he asked. He didn’t step away but he also didn’t let his hands linger against Felix where the belt had clung to him, tight between his chest and his waist. Felix didn’t look shy or discouraged. “I’m concerned for you.”

“You know,” Felix said with visibly affected disinterest, looking down at his own hand as he trailed it over the buckle of his pauldron, along the sinful line of one pec, filling Sylvain’s desperate mouth with saliva in his wake, “I’ve missed you since our last dust-up. Just a little.” He glanced up at Sylvain, heavy and purposeful as a blade, and struck true. “I thought you might like another shot at being the one to help me undo all this.”

All right, then. Maybe something of that variety of excitement was in the cards after all. Sylvain’s mouth ran dry again, changeable as the moon over their heads. “All right,” he said, making the thought real. “Then I say two swords is absolutely the limit.”

**X. THE CATTLE OF GERYON**

“Don’t go back just yet.”

It was code for _don’t make me go back just yet_ , but Sylvain let the under-meaning slide off his back, smiling easily at Felix where he sat on the creek bank, feet in the cool mud at the edge. Somehow, Byleth had fallen short enough on resources to put them on stable duty again, and Marianne had requested that they take Dorte out for a ride, if it wasn’t too much trouble, which of course it wasn’t. As it happened, Sylvain’s favorite courser needed a little exercise as well. “It’s way too hot to ride all the way back to the monastery just like that,” Sylvain agreed, letting the river breeze wash over him. “You know, you’re looking better on a horse these days. Ever think about joining the cavalry?”

Sylvain knew it was a ridiculous question but the snort he got in reply still made his grin widen. “Absolutely not,” Felix snapped. “Battles are for accomplishing an objective, not showboating about.”

“Hey, not all the mounted units are showboaters,” Sylvain replied. “Ingrid’s in the cavalry.”

“She fights practically,” Felix admitted, willing enough to be fair to her when she wasn’t around to hear him do it. “Not like you, waving your lance around like you’re in a tournament, galloping across the field to wherever is most dangerous.”

“Aww, Fe, are you paying attention to me now?” Sylvain asked, tossing his hands behind his head like that would help him.

“Tch,” Felix… tutted, or whatever that sound was. “I don’t need to pay attention to know you have a death wish.” It stung a little to hear it. “It’s like you’re trying to fight three giants with two people.”

“If someone else is there I think I could handle it,” Sylvain argued.

“The second person ends up doing everything, because you’re lying on the ground wounded half to death for them,” Felix said, and his face was hard for a moment before it seemed like what he said set in, and he softened just a touch. “I’m tired of watching you get hurt.”

“Oh.” It was meant to come out as a question, a press for more information, more validation, but it came out instead like a breath. Behind Sylvain, Dorte tossed his mane in the sun.

“Oh,” Felix repeated, teasing now that he’d made his point. He was looking at Sylvain now, corner of his mouth crooked, eyes squinted against the late afternoon light. “I’d rather watch you sit down next to me and put your feet in the damn water.”

“I can do that,” Sylvain said, and he did, dropping his boots carefully where they wouldn’t get unnecessarily dirty. “I’ll just sit here next to you, by the water, until the end of the war.”

“That would be nice,” Felix agreed. His arms were folded over his knees. He looked comfortable, safe, happy. Sylvain felt something warm and tight clamp over his lungs. “I think even if those giants show up we could handle them.”

“Even though we’re only two people?” Sylvain asked, kicking his leg in the water to splash at Felix’s ankle. It was childish, maybe, but Sylvain felt simultaneously that touching Felix would be like putting his palm against the sun and that he would expire if there wasn’t any contact between them. This was the balance.

“Because we’re only two people,” Felix explained. It was dark by the time they returned to the monastery, to the war that was waiting for them outside the riverbank.

**XI. THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE HESPERIDES**

“Don’t mock me.”

It had been Ignatz’ idea, a break from the grind of fighting, and Sylvain liked art well enough but he could think of about a dozen more enjoyable ways to get out of his own head. Felix, evidently, had not felt the same.

“Nah, I’d never do that,” Sylvain said, distractedly, only partially able to focus on anything beside Felix’s hands clasped behind his back, the pink flush smeared across his cheekbones. “Come on, show me what you made.”

“Don’t expect anything,” Felix snapped, but he tossed something at Sylvain anyway, correctly expecting his reflexes to kick in appropriately.

It was light in his hands as he turned it over, a wooden thing smeared with gold, carved in strokes with a knife Sylvain could recognize by the notches. “Wow,” Sylvain said, “I didn’t know you had it in you, Felix.”

“Ashe told me about it,” he explained, as though Sylvain might think Felix had had a tender idea on his own, or rather as though he might be able to convince Sylvain that such a thing wasn’t possible but he knew him better. “It’s some sort of amulet. Ignatz gave me the paint.”

“What kind of amulet?” Sylvain asked, like he wasn’t feeling the warm weight of it pressing through his fingers, up his arms, working through his chest to settle somewhere behind his sternum. “Are you trying to get me haunted?”

“Why the hell would Ashe know about something that attracts spirits?” Felix snapped. “Be sensible you half-wit.”

“Sorry,” Sylvain said, shakily. “Tell me what it is, then.”

And though he’d just mocked him for his own guess, Felix stared at Sylvain like he’d never expected him to actually want to know. “Um,” Felix said, strangely hesitant, almost shy, “well, I don’t expect it actually works. But it’s supposed to be some kind of protection charm. I figured someone as utterly incompetent as you could use all the help he could get.”

Sylvain looked at Felix then, really looked at him, a gaze that carried twenty years of teeth that didn’t know how to unclamp. Felix wasn’t a man of words, which made it easy to get him to speak if you just knew how.

“I… I want you to be safe,” he said, after a moment, exactly the length of time Sylvain thought it would take to unlock Felix’s just-below-the-surface sincerity, the still waters of his emotion running deep. “I don’t have much else to offer you.”

“Fe,” Sylvain started, then bit down on his own words before they could escape. It wasn’t like Felix owed him anything, not his friendship, not his protection, not the soft smiles and the knocked elbows and the filthy noises in the middle of the night that he offered him nevertheless. But he had given him something else. They’d given it to each other, all those years ago, crouched against a stone half-wall on the Gautier estate with nothing but the cold of the winter and the strength of their bond. “Fe, you’ve already offered me more than enough.”

“Maybe,” Felix said, softly, stretching his own fingers over the amulet still in Sylvain’s hand, “but I’d like to do more.”

**XII. CERBERUS**

“Live, damn it.”

It wasn’t the first time Sylvain had heard that, or something similar at least, Ingrid shouting it at him while she dropped from the sky to pull him out of an inopportune match-up, Mercedes murmuring a softer version as her white magic pulsed through his shoulder or his side or his thigh or any of the other places she’d had to heal him, Dimitri calling it less profanely out to all of them before one of any number of battles. But somehow, here at the foot of Edelgard’s throne, watching Felix say it as he pulled his sword bodily by the hilt from the chest of a mage who would otherwise have done some serious damage to Sylvain…

Well, it was almost like it meant something. Even as they separated, taking on reinforcements from opposite sides of the room, stretching across the palace, the words rang in Sylvain’s ears, muffling the sounds of battle, keeping him focused enough that Dorothea actually stopped to look at him from her spot on the fire orb, surprise and something like concern flashing over her face for a moment before she went back to work, before they were blockading the staircase, before there was a crash and a silence and the color left Dorothea’s face and her eyes went to the throne room.

_Edie_ , she’d always called the emperor, the last in a long line of friends whose blood watered the new Fodlan. Sylvain didn’t get to her before she was off, disappearing through the open doorway, leaving him to collapse, sweaty and bleeding and alive against the stairs down to the barracks, head in shaking hands.

The door they’d pushed through into the throne room, loud enough to hear, creaked open. Sylvain expected there would be a celebration. He expected he might leave it, might find Dorothea and Ferdinand somewhere apart, the only two brave enough to be visibly affected by the war’s end. His shoulders were trembling now, too. Then, footsteps.

A layer of tension Sylvain hadn’t realized he’d been carrying left his body at the sound, coming closer and closer, purposefully hitting the stone floor loud enough to hear. “I did what you asked,” he called, a little water seeping into his voice. The footsteps stopped, and he could seethe toes of bloodstained brown boots between the tips of his fingers.

“Are you hurt?” Felix’s voice was close, he’d crouched down to meet Sylvain where he was, and he shook his head. “Then come here.”

Still-gloved hands tugged gently at his, baring Sylvain’s face, dropping then to tug his chin up, and when Felix kissed him it was with more power and more intensity than death itself. Sylvain clutched at him, pulling him forward until Felix overbalanced and fell bodily into his lap, but neither seemed to mind, clinging to each other, gore and teeth and oil and tongues.

“And,” Felix panted as they parted, foreheads pressed together like they might combine, “will you keep doing what I ask?”

Felix’s eyes were lit by the sun overhead, the sun that shone over a united Fodlan, and for a moment Sylvain was struck dumb by wonder, stroking his hair over and over like it would fall out if he didn’t. But, “Yes,” he said, pressing his mouth to Felix’s, too hard and hungry to properly be called a kiss. “Yes,” again, “yes, yes, yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> if only you all could see my original notes. the memory of their interpretation of the cretan bull “wrecking orchards” alone is enough to knock me out.


End file.
